August Newsletter 2026

Many years ago, and multiple times, I have been asked, “What is the hardest thing about missions?” And some 46 years ago, Rhema Bible Training Center in Tulsa asked me to minister on the “Hardships of Missions.”

That recurring theme has caused me to minister in most of the Word of Faith-based Bible schools both here in the United States of America and literally around the world in my 58 years of third-world missionary evangelism. To me, the hardest thing about missions is being away from home and family as we travel the nations. And the biggest hardship of all is preaching Missions—the vision of God, the heartbeat of Jesus, the only cause that counts—to a Church today that doesn’t care, doesn’t get it, and doesn’t get involved.

They have failed to grasp the pulse beat of a lost and dying, sin-sick world—almost 8 and one half billion souls on planet Earth that are appointed to destruction, are virtually on death row, are about to go into eternity, and don’t have a clue. When Jackie and I first moved to south Mexico as young missionaries and newlyweds, we had no partners, no friends or family, in-laws or outlaws to support us. We moved to Oaxaca (pronounced Wa-ha-ka), Mexico, with a baby and a Bible and no one to depend on but poor old God. And we found out that God was not so poor after all, as the Church had wrongly taught us.

We were immediately advised by an old veteran missionary statesman on how to relate to the Church at home and how to get Americans to give to missions. But I disagreed with him and chose another path. He told us, “If you want the Church at home to support you and missions, you must make them feel guilty.” I responded, “I can’t do that.” He said, “You must.” I said, “I won’t.” He said, “You will starve.” I said, “I won’t starve.” He said, “Terry, Americans are good people. They will give, but you must make them feel guilty. You must show them photos of tragedies, hungry kids with flies on their faces and bloated bellies; then they will give.” I said, “I cannot and will not do that. The Word says that faith comes by hearing the Word of God. When I wanted to know about healing, I went to the Word. When I wanted to know about praying in tongues, marriage, family, health, prosperity, I went to the Word of God, and it created faith. “Why can’t I simply preach what the Word says about missions and giving, and it will create faith, and the people and pastors will respond and give to us and to missions?” My friend and mentor laughed and said, “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. That won’t work, and you had better learn to make them feel guilty.” I said, “I believe it will work, and Jackie and I are going to live it and prove it.”

So now, after 58 years, I believe we (Jackie and I, and now Renee and I) have lived it, proved it, and it will not only work, but it is the proper way to do it. When God called me to missions at age 13, I began watching the missionaries that came to our church and began to watch the way the Church treated them. The Church treated them like beggars, and the missionaries accepted that position. I rapidly decided I would not do that. All the missionaries I saw back then were sick and poor, and the Church seemed content to keep them that way. I thought as a kid, in the military our government does not make the front-line troops come back home and beg for bullets and supplies.

Why does the Church do that? We should not make missionaries beg for bullets. The first Christmas that Jackie and I came home from living in the mission field, churches and organizations asked me to come and minister to them, teach them on missions, and I realized I did not know how. I knew how to do missions but did not know how to teach on it to the Church. I only knew that I was not going to do it the same way I had seen it done in years gone by. I went before God and asked Him to give me a word for the Church on missions, and He did. He gave me Bible reasons (not begging reasons) that Christians, churches, Pastors, and ministries should get involved—very involved—in missions, the heartbeat of Jesus, the only cause that counts.

So here in this article I present to you a life-changing, Holy Spirit-given message on “7 Bible Principles for World Missions,” and why you should be involved in giving and praying for missionaries and missions.

1. God Instituted It. 
Missions did not originate in the heart or brain of any human. Not even the Apostle Paul thought up missions, or Billy Graham, or even my friend, the great veteran missionary statesman T. L. Osborn. It originated in the loving
heart of our Father, God, who did not want the eternal souls of man to be lost. Missions is not a Church doctrine, but a Bible doctrine; not a human doctrine, but a divine doctrine. Jesus was the expressed image of the heart of love of the Father as He came, sent by God to planet Earth as the world’s greatest missionary. I have often said that missions is the oldest ministry in the Bible, as it originated in the Garden of Eden when God realized He lost His family and determined to get them back. And He prophesied to the snake and said, “Her seed is coming and will bruise your head.” At that point missions, soul winning, salvation, the plan of redemption was born.

2. Missions Is the Central Theme of the Bible. 
If you are a Word person, then you are a world person, because what’s in the Bible is the world. I have often said, “Hang around me long enough and I’ll make you worldly minded.” You can go to thousands of libraries and find millions of volumes of books about man’s search for God, but the Bible is God’s book about His search for man. As John 3:16 is the central text of the Bible, the Great Commission is the central theme—the thread that runs so true throughout God’s Word, Old Testament and New. Everything from Genesis leads to the Great Commission, and everything to Revelation leads from it.

3. Jesus Commands It. 
The Great Commission is not a suggestion but a command. Jesus said, “Go ye,” and ye means you. Every believer is a missionary, either a goer (one who goes) or a sender (one who sends), but every believer and the Church as a whole has the commandment to get the Gospel to the world. Jesus gives us the Great Commission five times; that is very impressive: Matthew 28:18–20, Mark 16:15–18, Luke 24:47, John 20:21, and Acts 1:8. The one thing Jesus told His disciples to get done in His absence: get the Gospel to the world.

4. Love Compels It. 
Love compels us to share, to give, to help, to lift, to embrace, to care. You can give to someone without loving them, but you cannot love someone without giving to them. 1 John 3:17: “Whoso hath this world’s good and seeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in Him?” God so loved that He gave. Jesus so loved that He gave. If we are lovers, then we are givers.

5. Fairness Requires It. 
We Christians talk and rejoice about the second coming of Jesus, but half of the world doesn’t know He came the first time. It is not fair. Oswald J. Smith said, “No man has the right to hear the Gospel twice until every man has heard it once.” How many times have you heard it?

6. It Is a Debt We Owe. 
Neither Jesus nor the Apostle Paul was willing to saturate one area with the Gospel at the expense of another. It cost them both their blood. Jesus said in Luke 4:43, “I must go the next cities also… for therefore am I sent.” Paul said, “I am a debtor to the Greek and to the Barbarian; both to the wise and the unwise.” Romans 1:14. He said that he must go to Rome even if they killed him, which they did. If Jesus and Paul considered missions a debt and were willing to pay it with their lives, the Church should also consider it a debt and at least let it cost them prayer and finances. They felt they owed the Gospel to the heathen, and so do we today.

7. The Return of Jesus Hinges on It. 
“This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations. Then the end shall come.” Matthew 24:14. We are not waiting on God, but He is waiting on us, the Church, to be about the Master’s business and fulfill the Great Commission. Missions is the number one job of the Church, the task left to the Church by the Head of the Church. Let us not allow the Great Commission to go into remission and become the great omission. I believe that as Word people we will take these 7 Bible principles for world missions and give God His dream. I want you thinking about the world and how to get it saved. After all, it cost God His Son, and cost Jesus His blood.

Missions is:
The Only Cause That Counts

Terry L. Mize